


A Puppy for Belle

by Dardrea



Series: Fluffy Hiatus Sunday Ficlets [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Rumbelle - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hiatus Sunday Fluff 2014 - 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 18:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3144032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dardrea/pseuds/Dardrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So...I was dog sitting...and getting all nostalgic for the time my sister got a golden retriever puppy for her girls and wanted it to be a surprise for Christmas and I took care of her at my house for the few days until Christmas Eve. She was a little fluffy ball of blonde terror and a *great* dog until the day she died. (But she didn't get the purpose of the puppy pads at all!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Puppy for Belle

It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Not that long ago if Hopper had come to him with a sob story about his purebred Dalmatian, Pongo, getting out and getting the neighbor’s dog pregnant—with ten puppies yet!—he’d probably have raised his rent  _and_  the pet deposit on his place. If the man couldn’t keep his dog under control and found himself responsible for half the vet bills as well as half the puppies, it was no one’s fault but his own.

Gold still had a soft spot for dogs but his own days of animal husbandry were far behind him, thank you very much.

But then Hopper had brought up Belle, and as seemed to be happening more and more often lately, that had disarmed him as nothing else could. Hopper was right, Belle  _would_ love a puppy; there was no doubt in his mind.

So somehow he’d found his way into Dr. Hopper’s neighbor’s living room and found himself immersed in a ball of ten wriggling white and black puppies, sniffing and licking and generally being far too personal, in the way that very young things will.

They covered his designer black suit in drool and other even more questionable substances, and their smell, and little white hairs he didn’t think the dry cleaner would ever fully get out of his suit, but when he was almost out of time and still undecided they finished crawling over and under and across him and tumbled almost en mass back to their mother—leaving only one puppy still curled up on his thigh, her little head laid down on his leg, looking up at him with big, brown eyes.

He picked her up and she shifted a little in his grip but when he brought her close to his face she suddenly lunged out and licked him on the chin, wiggling her whole body with the force of her wagging tail.

He pulled her away with a soft chuckle that no one but Belle had heard in a very, very long time.

“This one,” he said, tucking her against his chest where she snuggled up inside of his suit jacket.

 ~~~

He brought the puppy to his shop first, and penned her in his workroom in the back—where she chewed up the puppy pads he put down for her, leaving shreds of white paper and absorbent filling everywhere, and then peed on a very expensive rug.

While he was seeing to a customer in the front of the shop she somehow managed to knock over an antique vase and chew up the original leather sheath on a sword he’d been restoring.

He took her outside to give her a chance to do what she wasn’t doing on the puppy pads and she found a puddle to splash through, dying her white fur brown and necessitating a quick bath in the sink in the back of the shop—after which she shook herself dry, in the process splattering water across a stack of old, leather-bound parchment books.

When he was ready to take them both home he turned away for a second, just a second he would forever swear, and turned back to find her squatting and leaving a steaming pile in the very center of his workroom floor, a look of intense concentration on her little face.

He sighed.

~~~

He beat Belle back to the house—it was vaguely possible he’d cut his day short a bit in an effort to curtail the damage his little present could do to his shop.

His house was hardly any more puppy-proof than his business: in her first five minutes the puppy chewed up one of his slippers and peed on the area rug in the drawing room.

Gold put her on a leash and kept her with him and in some semblance of control as he went upstairs to change. As soon as he reached the bedroom she collapsed by one of the bed posts and fell asleep leaving him to sigh in relief and search for something slightly less likely to be ruined by white fur. The best he could come up with was a white checked shirt and a pair of designer jeans he didn’t think he’d ever actually worn before.

He’d let the leash fall loose across the bed since the puppy was asleep anyway. He hadn’t anticipated Belle’s coming home and calling for him from the ground floor—and waking the puppy, who immediately broke into an excited scramble and dashed for the door, trailing the leash that tangled around his legs and brought him tumbling down onto his back—leaving him alone in the room, staring at the ceiling and contemplating raising Hopper’s rent. And Hopper’s neighbor’s rent, while he was at it.

“Rumpel?” he heard Belle call again from downstairs. “Rum—”

The sound of the little paws scrabbling at his hard wood floors was cut off.

He could hear his wife’s quick, light footsteps on the stairs.

“Oh, Rumpel, she’s precious! Is she for me?”

Then Belle was standing there, in the door to the bedroom, the puppy cuddled in her arms, licking excitedly at her neck and chin while she giggled and tried to keep its little pink tongue away from her mouth.

He sat up and laughed a little. He didn’t think his wife had even noticed that he was lying on the floor.

“Yes, sweetheart. She’s all yours,” he said. 


End file.
